Public Narrative Making the Police a Scapegoat

The public narrative making the police a scapegoat is a carefully negotiated account of Tony Leike’s arrest and release: Harry Hole will take sole responsibility for the wrongful arrest, while the institution that investigated and publicized it presents itself as having intervened to correct an individual officer’s excess. Mikael Bellman secures Harry’s signature by threatening him, but the resulting story is not merely a private bargain. It gives the police a public explanation, gives Leike a way to escape the lasting suspicion attached to arrest, and leaves the murder investigation without its principal suspect.

Construction of the Official Account

Bellman’s proposed press release draws a sharp line between Harry and the Norwegian Criminal Investigation Service. Its account presents Harry as having manipulated a young police lawyer into issuing the warrant and having acted alone; the agency, by contrast, is said to have been only peripherally involved before recognizing the problem and securing Leike’s immediate release. The distinction turns an institutional failure into an individual transgression. It also recasts the agency’s later intervention as evidence of responsible oversight rather than as part of the earlier arrest and interrogation.

The division of responsibility is designed for public consumption as well as internal protection. Bellman offers to say that he, as investigation leader, had publicly defended the arrest despite suspicions that a police officer had made a mistake. In this version, Harry later steps out from the shadows, and Bellman permits him to do so because he is an experienced senior officer who does not even work for the Norwegian Criminal Investigation Service. The wording spreads a narrow measure of responsibility across the episode, but reserves the decisive blame for Harry: Bellman’s own judgment becomes a defensible mistake, while Harry becomes the isolated actor whose conduct explains the scandal.

Coercion and the Signature

Harry understands that the account is not being offered freely. He identifies the immediate bargain: if he does not sign, he expects to be charged with drug smuggling and possession. Bellman makes the threat more personal by pointing to Harry’s father, who is hospitalized and not expected to live much longer, and observing that detention would keep Harry from being with him. The appeal to family grief is therefore part of the pressure, not a separate expression of concern.

The signature scene makes the imbalance tangible. A press release and pen are pushed across the table, but the room is too dark for Harry to read the document; he signs anyway. His assent follows Bellman’s explanation of the political and institutional logic, not an informed review of the exact words he is authorizing. Bellman takes the paper and tells him to remember that the arrangement is best for everyone. Harry recognizes the gesture as the victor’s benevolent care. The release is thus both an administrative document and the material record of a coercive settlement.

Why Leike Accepts the Story

Bellman’s account depends on Leike’s cooperation, and Harry asks why a man arrested and questioned by the Norwegian Criminal Investigation Service would support it. Bellman’s answer supplies the private interest that makes the public story plausible: even after release, an arrest leaves a shadow of suspicion. Leike is trying to win investors’ confidence, so he has reason to endorse an explanation that casts the arrest as the work of a rogue officer who acted alone. The scapegoat story does not require Leike to defend the police out of loyalty; it offers him a way to distance himself from the stain of having been arrested.

This alignment turns the narrative into an exchange of advantages. Leike can disavow the arrest’s implications, Bellman can limit institutional exposure, and Harry can be made to carry the responsibility. Harry himself states the larger institutional purpose: he is protecting the entire police force by taking all the blame. Bellman’s response confirms that he regards Harry’s understanding of the arrangement as evidence that they have reached an agreement. Protection of the institution is not incidental to the bargain; it is the justification that makes the sacrifice of one officer appear necessary.

Public Circulation and Investigative Cost

The account moves from the signed page into newspaper coverage. Later, the front pages of two of the three largest newspapers show Leike getting into a car outside police headquarters; the third uses an archival image of Harry from a television talk show in which he discussed the snowman. Bellman tells the assembled investigators that Harry has accepted full responsibility and that this is only right. The contrast between Leike’s image outside headquarters and Harry’s older television photograph gives the public story two visible figures: the released suspect and the officer designated to answer for his arrest.

Inside the investigation group, the settlement does not resolve the murder case. The team numbers thirty-six, three times the size of a normal murder investigation, and has worked for a long time without a genuine result. Bellman had let himself and his colleagues enjoy the supposed triumph of arresting Leike; now the arrest has collapsed, the ministry has asked about the case, and the agency chief has warned him that time is running out. Bellman tells the group that they have no principal suspect, although new leads all point toward Hävasshütte in Ustaoset. The scapegoat narrative offers a clean explanation for the arrest, not a solution to the murders.

The Story’s Fracture

The press account’s circulation is echoed by an image of its consequences: a printed internet page showing Harry Hole taking all the blame appears among pictures and newspaper clippings on a wall. A champagne bottle is smashed against that wall; its foam runs down over the displayed material, while the speaker moves barefoot through broken glass and blood, laughing and repeating the idea of being free and free of guilt. The passage does not establish the speaker’s identity, but it places the public image of Harry’s confession beside a violent, unstable performance of release. The official statement promises closure by fixing blame; the surrounding scene makes that promised freedom feel anything but settled.

The concept’s force lies in this gap between public simplicity and private cost. The press release reduces a compromised institutional episode to one responsible officer, and Bellman presents that reduction as protection for everyone. Yet the signed page cannot restore Leike as a suspect, erase the pressure applied to Harry, or supply the investigation with the answer it lacks. The story succeeds as damage control precisely because it makes responsibility legible; its failure as an account of the murders is visible in the unresolved leads that continue beyond it.